I’ll probably end up buying Diaspora in hardcopy because I’m going to be in Vancouver after xmas and it is supposed to be on sale at a couple of stores there. But if I could have a pdf, I probably would have bought it and read it weeks ago, possibly even gotten excited enough to run a one-shot with my crew here.

I can’t help but feeling that there is a certain design-y control freakiness concerning the Diaspora designers not wanting a pdf that mimics the print version. It’s like they can’t stand it that the “artifact” will be out of their control and printed in weird sizes, or multiple sheets per page or on already-printed on paper. If they were truly forward-thinking, why not just release it as a pure text file that individuals could format to their own personal specifications à la Cory Doctorow? Just sell the text itself.

The Print+PDF bundles are great but some day I’d like to see a method of getting some refund on a pdf purchase when you purchase the book. I know this may be difficult to arrange, but I’m sure you’ll see improved sales as a result.

Also, when it comes to online games and virtual tabletops the combination of print and pdf is unbeatable.

No one in industry is looking in this field, and think about kindle and sony pocket, and how this is getting inmense grow this winter.

Really, no one in rpg is filling that void. And is a huge void.

Certainly, this is a question all the Diaspora authors are thinking about.

Of this, I have no doubt.

Certainly, this is a question all the Diaspora authors are thinking about.

And while the SRD is nice for searching for the occasional thing, if I don’t have a PDF for ride-along with a print book, I’m actually less likely to run the thing, as its absence means my job running the game is more difficult. With Print+PDF purchases I make, I make use of the product in what Brad might call a “highly correlated” fashion. I’ll search the PDF to find the page number — but I’ll then read the content in the print book, as that’s my preference.

While I do believe there’s a strong set of principles in operation on either side of the perspectives here, I’ve grounded my opinions in the real-world practicals of how I make use of RPG products. It may not be how you make use of such products, but I think that matters less to the whole question of whether or not the practical application holds up as valid.

What’s interesting to me as this discussion develops (here and in other places) is the line that people walk on both sides of the issue between principle and practicality. Though there isn’t a pdf available of the typeset book, there is a lot out there: from the Diaspora website, one can download the entire space combat chapter and all the reference tables from the back of the book, whether or not you’ve bought the book; the SRD is available, as a website and as a pdf, also available whether or not you’ve bought the book.

As a result some of the comments that I read, particularly concerning issues of practicality, seem to me to be less persuasive than others. One can get a clear sense of what one will get if one buys by looking at the space combat chapter. One does have access to the ruleset, for look up during play. AP reports offer examples, and in some ways better examples than ones we’ve come up with. We’ve posted pdfs of the tables and the skills available, because these are the things we’ve found one needs during play. Granted, our examples aren’t there, but an awful lot is, and what we’ve put out we’ve tried to put out with the guy on the street in mind.

So one question I have is what is missing from what is freely available? What don’t you have electronically that is preventing you from playing?

Falling on the other side of the line, then, are those arguing from principle (as indeed Fred does). In this respect, we are agreed: once practical needs are met (as I believe they are by a pdf, or by what is out there fore Diaspora already), the issue becomes one of principle, and it just happens that Fred feels differently than we do. This principle can be expressed on an artist/business continuum, but it need not.

If we do an electronic release of Diaspora, we want to do it right. At the moment, we aren’t agreed on the form that might take.

The biggest obstacle to the current system delivery is, as Mick notes, that we don’t physically handle every book before its shipped. That too is a choice we’ve made: since we are in Canada, to do so jacks up the price for everyone on the planet except Canadians, and so (in our general self-effacing patriotic spirit) that isn’t what we chose. Instead, you get a book cheaper from the closest Lulu printer rather than from Vancouver. But be sure that if there are problems with the result, we’ll want to make it right. That may not satisfy everyone, but it is completely within our mandate to ensure that our customers have a product that we are proud of.

Toph

Overall, I have to echo the sentiments in this thread that express confusion and frustration about the lack of a PDF. I don’t get it.

But then again, I don’t need to get it. VSCA can go ahead do whatever they want with their artifact-only approach. I would like to support them and I would, if I felt they had any interest in supporting my preferences. But that’s not the case, so I’ll just go ahead and do the next best thing: Read and use the Diaspora SRD. No doubt the True Artifact holds many interesting and awe-inspiring things that the SRD lacks, but in the end, all I really need is the open content anyhow. My imagination and the ingenuity of my friends and peers can supply the rest.

Viva la SRD!

Or, to turn it around: If I’m in the market for the book, I’m *also* in the market for the PDF/electronic version. Not going with PDF is an interesting move, but as eReaders continue to grow into everyday life, other formats may, too.

On some games, I did the bundle, and that never was a mistake. But, living in Europe, it made the sometimes weeks-long waits (on preorders, where cheap shipping options often add a week or three to delivery across the pond) bearable.

Often enough, PDFs suck for reading, but that is not inherent to the medium. If you have multicolumn layouts which are a boon on paper, you’ll be going to zoom and pan around and almost always only get parts of what you want to read on the screen.

In a way, I blame PDF readers for this, because they usually don’t allow fluid “select this and put in another window” with multiple selections, so I could collect info scattered all over a book volume of text.

Also, if there’s a screen optimized PDF version of a book, I’d still like a “verbatim copy” for easy reference to the physical volume as pointed out by readers before.

The consumer sees that physical and temporal barriers can be removed… they *know* you can deliver the book in electronic format, they *know* a song can be delivered DRM-free, they *know* a movie can be delivered in a portable file, viewable on a non-networked playback device. And when the publisher/label/studio chooses not to do so, or does so at a premium cost (ebooks that cost more than the paper book), the consumer *knows*… it wasn’t because of technical limitations, it was because the publisher *chose* to refuse to sell to the customer in the time, place and format that the customer desires to buy.

That is, the publisher has said, “We don’t want to do business with you unless you do it our way.” And that’s a recipe for failure in any business… expecting the customer to meet the business’s needs instead of the business meeting the customer’s needs.

The piracy issue is exacerbated by this refusal… if I want an ebook and the publisher refuses to publish in that format, I can often find it electronically by other means. There have been several instances where I purchased a paper book, set it aside, and then downloaded the same book from a torrent in a well-produced ebook format. The right or wrong aside, publishers avoiding digital formats doesn’t keep their works from being pirated, and it can really frustrated legitimate customers who *want* to give the publisher money. (And it’s very frustrating, because I want to support the ebook market to show publishers that there *is* a market. But the publishers are trying to price the market out of existence.)

What publisher/label/studio in their right mind says, “No, sorry. We don’t want your money. Maybe you can find it on bittorrent.”? But that’s effectively what they are saying when they refuse to sell digital formats because they’re afraid of piracy… they make piracy the *only* option to obtain that format.

The number of products I would have bought if I could have had them electronically, right *now*, is growing quickly. I skipped Extreme Dungeon Mastery because I don’t want more paper on my shelf. Ditto Open Game Table (now in PDF, but not when they had grabbed my interest). Quite a bit more music would be in my library if “order a physical CD” weren’t the only option. I’d buy TV shows from Amazon if they’d deliver DRM-free “watch later” to Linux at a reasonable price ($35 for a TV season streamed in low-quality is a bit much).

And game publishers are not getting my money because I already have too much paper, I don’t want to pay a shipping “surcharge”, I don’t want to wait, and I want the convenience of the digital format. I see something like Diaspora when it’s “hot” and think, “that sounds cool”… and as soon as I find out that I have to pay for bulky paper and shipping, I walk away. If it’s really “hot”, I’ll look for an opportunity to preview it… getting a chance to preview (the whole work, not 20 pages) has made some paper sales, but those are rare compared to the ones I just walk away from.

And even absent this, PDFs are useful if I’m curious about a game. Not everyone can get easy access to a physical copy to look it over, but I can immediately follow up a good review with grabbing a copy as an impulse buy. [Wait, did I say this was "a good thing?"] And yes, PDF are a lot cheaper, especially when you start figuring in the aforementioned freight costs (as a rough guide, in Australia, either direct or through a distributor, double the US cover price usually is quite accurate). And if I like it I can still buy a physical copy of the book, anyway.

Oh, and the OBS PDF preview is extremely useful to see if I want to grab a book if I’m vacillating. It’s surprising how few companies will provide a sample of their actual work on their web site (as opposed to advertising it). It can be a very powerful tool to convince someone to buy the product. Especially now with FLGS tending to go the way of the dodo.

But I can quite appreciate wanting your book to be a work of art. I mean, that’s the reason I bought Trail of Cthulhu and [multiple copies of] the white book of Nobilis (one to play and one to keep). So I can quite understand that the authors of Diaspora were producing a work of art, not just a game. Although it does mean I shall probably wait until they do, or a friend gets a copy that I might peruse, before I do get a copy of my own.**

[* Whilst PDFs are helpful (for one thing they can be a lot more convenient to locate in your library, especially when you need to look something up in a hurry), they are still really just a book on a screen (and thus not really as versatile or as satisfying as a physical book). But converting them into an indexed and hyperlinked document is immensely useful at the tabletop for fast reference can be quite useful if you have the ability to do so. Because of their nature, many game books do benefit from the non-linear information architecture that becomes possible via computer support. At least, after the initial reading.]

[** I already have more games than I could possibly play/run for the rest of my life. So most of my purchases these days are just for interest – to see if people have developed something innovative and intriguingly new. Or unless I am already a fan of their work.]

If I were to make predictions, I’d say it’ll happen when we get the combination of an e-reader that offers every option that the printed form does and then some (all e-readers currently fail this test); at that point there will be consumer-driven market pressure for easy point-and-click conversion of the print layout process into content generated for this hypothetical future e-reader.

We’re way not there yet.

However, my gut feel is that PDF is ultimately going to be a dead end for digital publication (unless it gets a serious rethink). It tries too hard to be like paper, and the big downside of that is that it can’t adjust itself to the available display. I want to be able to read my digital book on any size display from my smartphone, my eBook reader, my netbook and my desktop computer. Oh, and I want to swap between landscape and portrait orientation on the fly. On the other hand, I’m not sure we have anything close to a suitable PDF replacement yet.

When such a thing comes along, I think that the production process will change. The digital media version will get produced first, and then that will be enhanced for printed book production.

Weird thought. You mentioned that delivering the PDFs has minimal overhead and zero shipping. What are the actual costs with providing PDFs? Is there any additional layout or software cost (e.g., can QuarkExpress just generate a PDF)? Any cost involved in creating the watermarks, etc.?

I know that there is a nominal cost in terms of web hosting and bandwith usage. But, oddly enough, I’d actually say that was a shipping cost, rather than an overhead cost.

I don’t know that the distinction means anything. It was just something that occurred to me while reading that paragraph.

Then again, if you had held up on producing that PDF, gotten the print version of PTA out there, and then let PTA go out of print (as it has) never having gotten around to putting the PDF out there — you’d be going on a year or two of PTA being unavailable to new customers in *any* form. And I know from running the IPR customer service queue that “when will PTA be back in print” is in the top 5 questions we field on a regular basis.

Which is why my “compromise” position on all of this amounts to: keep to your ideals for how to construct a PDF if you must, but don’t fail to produce one quickly — and by quickly I mean within weeks to a couple months at most of your print product release.

The thing is, if the ultimate goal is to have a PDF-designed-as-a-PDF product, I don’t see how releasing the PDF-as-e-book-PDF undercuts that. Offer options, let customers choose what *they* want, not what *you* want them to have. And if this isn’t at all about what customers want but about what you as creator want, then don’t sell it; give it out and let people come along for the ride. When you make me pay for something, I’m part owner, not someone to be told what I am allowed to buy or not.